We have asked two of our favourite guitar-pop bands to help curate an all day party in Leeds at the Brudenell Social Club.
In part an excuse to celebrate the release of Personal Trainer's brand new album on Bella Union, and similarly Bull's great 2nd record 'Engines Of Honey' (which landed at the beginning of the year), but also just to celebrate celebrating with friends at the end of our summer.
Personal Trainer
If you like pop music to keep you on your toes, Amsterdam?s Personal Trainer provide that service fulsomely on their second album. Essentially the project of Willem Smit (working with co-producer/collaborator Casper van der Lans) on record and a band live, Personal Trainer showed a facility for DIY indie-pop exuberance and experiment in sync with 2022?s debut, Big Love Blanket. Now signed to Bella Union, Willem returns re-energised with Still Willing, a multi-faceted album of shining contrasts and spry melodies, bursting arrangements and subliminal sounds, playful lyrics and self-reflection: in short, a pop album executed with dynamism, vim and charm.
As Willem says, this is a record fuelled by its extremes: sometimes energetic and loud, sometimes quiet and thoughtful, always full of hidden pleasures. ?When I listen to the records I make, the main thing I hope is that every time something happens on them, you?re like, ?Wow.? I like to be taken by surprise like that on a record, to kind of be thrown around.?
Willem is the epicentre of the band, which originated from impromptu and exhilarating live shows featuring ever-shifting members of different local bands sharing a bustling stage. The live line-up has solidified somewhat but Willem still welcomes the contrast with his recorded work: ?When I make the record, it?s me calling the shots. But I can?t tell everyone exactly what to do every second when we?re on stage. There?s, like, shakers flying around or instruments being thrown all over the place, so I don?t have the capacity to control that. And that?s really exciting to me.?
The band consists of Willem Smit (vocals) Kilian Kayser (percussion), Leon Harms (drums), Mart Boumans (guitar/sax), Franti Maresova (guitars), Ruben van Weegberg (bass), and Abel Tuinstra (keys/synths).
Press:
'A triumph of creative soundcraft, knitting together samples, studio trickery, and towering hooks.'
Under The Radar
'Cushily familiar yet riotously unique; pantomiming and compelling.'
So Young Magazine
'Dutch indie-rockers expertly juggle with pathos, clatter and Malkmus-esque deadpan.'
MOJO
Bull
Formed by vocalist and songwriter Tom Beer and guitarist Dan Lucas, Bull?s mission is simply to make the music they wanted to listen to, inspired by their 90?s heroes such Pavement, Yo La Tengo and the Pixies. The rest of the band came together through a mix of friendships and happenstance. Drummer Tom Gabbatiss joined after he and Tom jammed together in bars while they were back-packing round Thailand, and Kai West had previously used to jump up on stage with the band and ?Bez? (verb meaning to dance badly while intoxicated) before they eventually let him play bass.
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